


Imperative

by MentalAnarchy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Het, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MentalAnarchy/pseuds/MentalAnarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has never looked at any of his companions this way before, but things are very different with Rose Tyler. Is he losing his mind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperative

**Author's Note:**

> A small attempt to rationalize the old show's official "no hanky-panky in the TARDIS" edict with the flirtier attitude of the new show. Set somewhere vaguely between "Dalek" and "The Empty Child".

“Doctor? Is everything alright?”  
  
Rose was standing on the other side of the console, her finely arched brows bunched together. Even frowning, she was beautiful.  
  
He shook his head to clear it. “Sorry?”  
  
“You’ve been staring at that readout for a quarter of an hour. Is something wrong?”  
  
“No. Of course not.” He pulled on a smile, hoped it looked convincing. “Everything’s fine. We’ll be on Tarquinos in a few hours. You should get some sleep.”  
  
She cocked her head at him. “What about you?”  
  
“I don’t need much rest.”  
  
“You sure?” She came around the console. Her approach made his hearts quicken ridiculously. Her eyes searched his face. “You look exhausted.”  
  
“I’m alright.”  
  
She laid her hand on his arm. Even through the leather of his jacket sleeve, his skin tingled with the contact. “You sure?” she asked again, more emphatically.  
  
He patted her hand, then reached up and unnecessarily adjusted the internal sensory system, just so he could slide his arm away.  
  
Rose shrugged. “Knock me up when we land, then.”  
  
He waited until he couldn’t hear her footfalls anymore. Then he put his hand over the place on his sleeve where hers had been, wincing at his inability to ignore the memory of her touch.  
  
He was finally going mad. He’d been through a couple of close calls, but this couldn’t be blamed on an unstable regeneration. No. This was very different.  
  
As near as he could tell, it had started in Cardiff. Between the neckline of her dress and her upswept hair, he had found himself noticing things he shouldn’t have. Like the way her fair skin flushed ever so slightly when she became emotional. He had hardly stopped wondering since about whether it warmed perceptibly when that happened. What it would feel like under his fingers. Or his lips.  
  
He brushed hard at his sleeve, trying to wipe away the feeling of her nearness, and went back to staring at the trajectory plot on the screen in front of him. But soon the lines and numbers blurred again and Rose’s smile overlaid them.  
  
He closed his eyes, shook his head. This was impossible. He had never felt anything like this with any of his previous companions. Never. He’d admired Liz’s good sense, Sarah Jane’s resolve, Tegan’s honesty, Peri’s optimism. Not once had he admired the scent of a perfume or the curve of a hip.  
  


* * *

The bedside lamp came on automatically when Rose opened the door. She kicked off her trainers and flopped onto the bed.

The Doctor was a terrible liar. Dead cert, he was not alright. He might be telling the truth about not needing much rest, but he looked like he wasn’t getting any at all.

She sighed. These last few days especially he’d seemed so distant and sad. He must be thinking about his people, about the war. She remembered how she’d felt when she’d realized that, because she was standing at the end of the world, her mum had been dead for five billion years. Imagine how much worse it was for him!

She burrowed into the pillow. He was a grown man, though. 900 years old. And a genius, too, as he so often reminded her. Surely, he would sort himself out in time.

It was almost an hour later that she admitted that she wasn’t going to get any sleep. Not until she knew he really was alright. So she shoved her feet back into her trainers and went looking for him.

He wasn’t in the control room, though.

Maybe he’d seen sense and gone to bed. Good thing if he had, too. But Rose couldn’t bring herself to assume that.

His room was three corridors away from hers. Which was closer than it had ever been before. She wanted to take that as a sign, but she still stood outside his door for what felt like a week before she got up the nerve to knock.

“Rose? What’s wrong?”

He’d taken off his jacket. She could see it behind him, draped over the arm of an overstuffed reading chair. The lamp beside the chair was on, and a stack of books lay on a tiny table beneath it.

“Can’t sleep,” she said. “Thought maybe I could ask you something.”

“Of course.” He opened the door the rest of the way and let her in.

She’d never been in his room before. She was vaguely disappointed that it wasn’t at all alien or exotic. Instead it looked a bit like a pensioner’s flat -- comfy chair, bookcase, cozy duvet on the ironwork bed. All it needed was an efficiency kitchen and a water closet and a window overlooking a backstreet in the East End.

“What do you want to know?” He waved her into the chair, then perched on the edge of the bed.

“Doctor, I…” She hesitated. He’d been tetchy before when she’d asked him personal questions, and she didn’t want to put him off. But she couldn’t think of a way to make it not sound personal. “I was wondering whether you’re sleeping alright.” God, that was awful. She sounded like his mother!

His expression went all quizzical. “Whether I’m what?”

“Only you’ve seemed so tired these last few days, and… look, maybe I’m just being a git, but I’m a bit worried about you.”

He stared at her for a few seconds. Then it was like something just drained out of him. His eyes softened, his posture sagged, he scrubbed his hands through his close-cropped hair.

“I am, too,” he said.

* * *

_Rassilon’s Seal! What are you doing?_ But it was too late. The words were already out.

The look on Rose’s face was pure shock.

“To answer your question: no, I haven’t been sleeping well.”

She reached over and slipped her hand into his. The nerves in his skin came alive under her touch as his fingers folded around hers. She was so warm. “Bad dreams? About the war?”

He sighed. He desperately wanted to just nod. To just let her think she knew what the problem was. To just let her hold his hand for a little while and say comforting words and then go away and leave him alone. But that wouldn’t help anything.

Slowly, he shook his head. “Ah, Rose.”

“Your hand is shaking, Doctor.” She held it tighter, as though to still it.

“So it is.” He lifted their clasped hands and leaned his cheek against her warm, soft skin. “You seem to have that effect on me. You shouldn’t, but you do.”

“Shouldn’t what?”

“You shouldn’t make me tremble like this. It’s all wrong. I shouldn’t… I _can’t_ feel like this.” She loosened her grip, and he let her hand slip away. But she didn’t back away as he expected. Instead she shifted from the chair to the bed beside him. Close beside him. Too close.

“Why not?” Her voice was every bit as warm as the hand that she laid on his arm.

“Because I’m a Timelord. Because we don’t… we don’t follow the same instinctual patterns that humans do. Our biology isn’t geared toward intense and frequent reproductive urges. We don’t--”

“--Reproductive urges?” Her cheeks were pink already and the color was rapidly deepening. But she was smiling. Actually, she was starting to snigger. “Are you trying to say you’re... horny?”

He was shocked at how much her reaction stung. He turned his gaze away, looking at the empty chair. “Sort of.”

Rose broke into full-on laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

She stiffled a giggle. “It’s just… Oh, Doctor, you really are alien, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Was that supposed to be seductive?”

“Seductive?” Oh, dear. This wasn’t going well at all. “Rose, I’m not trying to seduce you.”

“No?” She cocked her head at him.

“Of course not.”

She reached up and laid her hand against his cheek. The laughter in her eyes melted into something else. “Why not?”

There was something in her tone, something weighty, that he’d never heard before. It quickened his hearts and thickened his blood. She leaned in toward him, her expression intent.

“Because--” The touch of her lips on his cut him off.

By Rassilon’s Seal! She was kissing him! Worse than that: he was kissing her! His mind raged at him to stop, but his body was at the mercy of the alien emotions that flooded him. Her lips were softer than he’d even imagined, her tongue hot and sweet. His arms encircled her, drawing her against him.

* * *

His mouth tasted of chamomile and copper, and it was cooler than Rose had expected. But that was alright. She was giving off more than enough heat for the both of them. And, alien or not, he knew how to kiss a girl.

Once she got him started, that is.

“Rose,” he said the moment her mouth left his, “I don't think--”

She touched her fingertips to his lips. “No, Doctor, you think too much.” She kissed him again, savoring the taste of his tongue.

Then he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away. “Rose, we mustn’t do this.”

Her face and ears burned. “Why not?” she asked, startled at the sharp edge in her own voice. She hadn’t realised until she’d kissed him just how much she’d been wanting to.

“Because--”

“--’Cause I’m just a kid? I am of legal age, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “But--”

“--But I’m human? ’Cause it’s gonna be a long time if you’re waiting for one of your--” She clamped down on her words in shock. Anger washed away in a flood of shame. She hadn’t known that she could be so cruel as to even think about throwing the extinction of his people at him like that!

“Rose, please.” His voice was steady, but his expression was pained. “This isn’t normal for me. Something’s terribly wrong. I could be seriously ill. I may very well be losing my mind.” His lips tightened, then he nodded ever so slightly. “I’m taking you home.”

“No.” She cupped his face in both hands. “If you’re not well, the last thing I’m going to do is leave you alone.”

“You have to, Rose.” He peeled her fingers from his cheeks, pressed her palms together between his hands. “I can’t risk endangering you. What if I become violent?”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

An image formed in her mind, of him, hate in his eyes, pointing a huge gun at a Dalek. And at her, because she was shielding it. But she was looking right into his eyes, and there was none of that now. “Yes, I do,” she said. She pulled her hands free, touched his face again. This time, he let her. “We’ll figure this out, Doctor.” He was starting to shake again. It broke her heart. And it made her tremble, too. “We will. I promise.”

“How? I can’t even think straight.”

She leaned her forehead against his, pitched her voice low: “There’s an easy solution to that.”

“No.” He winced, turned his face half-away, eyes shut tight. “I won’t ask that of you, Rose.”

“You’re not asking,” she said. “I am.” She pushed against his cheek until he looked at her again. “Please, Doctor?” Then she kissed him.

* * *

He couldn’t stop her. He couldn’t stop her from touching him. He couldn’t stop her from kissing him. And as the heat of her hands and her mouth began to penetrate him, he couldn’t stop himself either. He stopped trying. He stopped wanting to. He surrendered to his madness. He surrendered to Rose.

His jumper went first. She peeled it from him as though it were the rind of a fruit that she feared to bruise. The warmth of her fingers against his bare chest was shocking. Everywhere her hands went, they left a trail of heat that lingered in his skin.

He watched her t-shirt and brassiere follow the jumper onto the floor. She took his hands in hers, guiding him along her skin, sighing at his touch.

He was, of course, fully conversant with human physiognomy. He had known that her breasts would be soft but firm, that the sensitive pink nipples would tighten under his cool fingers. What surprised him was the pleasure that he himself derived from the contact.

Or perhaps it was Rose’s response that affected him so profoundly, that made him feel as though the nerve density in his skin had suddenly trebled, that his hearts had forgotten how to keep proper rhythm. The way she moaned when his tongue circled one nipple, then the other. The way she smiled as he opened the button at the top of her jeans.

He had never known that he could want anything as badly as he wanted this. As badly he wanted her. If this is what humans felt all the time, it was no wonder so much of their art centered round these urges.

"Rose." She was so beautiful. Her eyes were brighter than he'd ever seen them, the fair skin of her face and throat flushed a soft pink. She held out her hands to him as he let his trousers fall, opening all her limbs to welcome him... home.

* * *

It didn't even occur to Rose until afterwards. Not until they finally lay still, limbs entwined and breaths slowing, and she rested her ear against his chest, listening to his hearts beating. Then it hit her, and she giggled.

“What?”

She raised her head and looked into his smoky blue eyes. “I just got real lucky, dinn't I?” The smug grin spread halfway across his face before she poked him in the ribs. “Not what I meant, you.”

The arm around her back pulled her closer. “Well?”

“I never thought to ask if Timelords were... if you could... if you had...”

Now he was laughing. “Anatomical compatibility? You're just wondering about that now?”

“Well, hardly wondering. Just, you know, surprised.”

He lifted a fist and unfolded one finger with each word: “Humans, Timelords, Kaleds, Trakenites, Trions... Do you have any idea how many species there are out there that are -- superficially at least -- nearly identical? And how many others just have more or less compatible reproductive physiognomies? Thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. There are scientists and philosophers on half a million worlds trying to figure out why that is.”

“And why is that?” she asked.

“There are hundreds of theories.”

“Meaning you don’t know.”

“I've been too busy with other things. May have to look into it now, though.” He kissed her forehead. “I've never felt anything like that, you know. Not in 900 years.”

She laughed. “No, no. You’re doing it backwards. First you flatter me, then you shag me.”

He smiled, shaking his head. “A species as long-lived as mine doesn't survive if it reproduces willy-nilly, Rose. It overruns its ecology, depletes its food supply, overpopulates to critical mass and then succumbs to epidemics or famine or any number of extinction scenarios.”

She rolled this over in her mind. “You mean Timelords don't get horny?”

“Not the way humans do.”

“You just did.”

“My point exactly,” he said. “I started to notice it in Cardiff. Charles Dickens made an inference about our being in a small box together, and I--”

“--You told him he was wrong.”

“Which he was, of course.” He brushed her hair away from her cheek. “Except...”

“What?”

His face was very serious. “Except he wasn't. Not completely. I'd been trying very hard not to notice how lovely you looked in that dress.” She started to smile at the compliment, but the pain in his eyes killed that reflex quickly. “I told myself I was just tired, that what I was feeling was just affection magnified by exhaustion.”

“And the war?” Rose added.

He nodded. “Post-traumatic stress affects most species.”

“So you think it might be shellshock?”

“Perhaps. I haven't ruled it out, anyway.”

She watched his face carefully. “Or maybe you're just grieving.”

He tensed. “What?”

“Grieving. You've lost your whole world, Doctor. Family? Friends? I assume you had some. People do odd things when they've lost someone. Things that aren't like themselves at all.”

He made a dismissive little grunt.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just a very... human sort of logic, Rose. Extrapolating to the psychologies of other species isn’t always... Of course!” He hugged her tight and kissed her forehead again. “Rose Tyler, you're a genius!”

“What? What’d I say?”

“It’s not grief, but it is related to loss. Yes, that must be it!” He levered himself up onto one elbow, leaning over her. He was grinning like a fool.

“Huh?”

He laughed. “It never occurred to me! How could I have missed it?”

“Missed what? Doctor, what are you talking about?”

“Rose, d’you remember I told you that I would know if any other Timelord had survived?” She nodded. “Because I'm a Timelord, I can feel the shape and movement of time and space.”

“Handy thing, I expect.”

“Exactly.”

“But what's it got to do with--?”

“--I’m getting to it,” he said. “All Timelords shared this gift. And because we all had this same connection to time-space, we could also sense each other.”

“Like a psychic thing? Reading one another’s minds and such?”

“Not at that level.” He smiled, though his eyes were sad. “More of a vague presence. Useless background noise, most of us considered it.”

“But now they’re all gone.”

He nodded. “Burned from the universe as though they’d never existed. Depending on your point of view, they never did.”

“What?”

“It’s not called a time war for nothing. When the Timelords ceased to exist, it happened everywhere at once. And everywhen.”

She wanted to say something comforting, but she knew anything she said would just sound lame. Instead, she touched his cheek. His expression softened and he leaned into her hand.

“I still don't see what any of this has to do with... with us.”

He frowned for a moment. “There are certain species,” he said, “that can mutate very rapidly, under the right conditions. Not as a species, I mean. Not over generations, the way normal evolution does it. But individually. Some Earth amphibians, for instance -- certain kinds of frogs -- can change sex in order to ensure reproduction.”

“Sorry?” She was thoroughly confused now.

“Think of me as a frog, Rose.”

She grinned. “Doctor, I’ve already kissed you.”

“No. I mean, imagine this: a species with a long lifespan and a low reproductive urge. A good balance, everything in order. Population replacement with no catastrophic overgrowth.”

“The Timelords.”

“Yes. Now, imagine that race is wiped out. Or nearly wiped out. A single individual manages to survive.”

“You mean you.”

“Yeah. The species has a regenerative capability--”

“A what?”

“I’ll explain later. The lone survivor’s genetic material recombines during the transdimentional death of its species, and because it can _feel_ that, it restructures itself, ever so slightly, into a form that might -- just might -- be more likely to reproduce.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed.

“Rose, don’t you see what this means?”

“Not really.”

He hugged her to him far too tightly, laughing. “I’m not going mad. I’m not losing my mind. I’m completely normal!”

She pushed at him until he loosened his grip enough for her to breathe. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“It’s just that ‘normal’ has been redefined, and I hadn’t realised it.”

“What?”

“I’ve changed, Rose. My DNA has rearranged itself, given me a new instinctual programme.”

He was starting to make sense. Sort of. “You mean, you’ve mutated?”

“A bit.”

She raised one eyebrow at him, looked him over from top to toe. She couldn’t resist. “Which bit?”

“This one.” He tapped his temple. Then he grinned. “And this one.” He caught her hand in his, moved it down between them, where she could feel for herself that the conversation was about to get a lot less abstract.

She smiled up at him. “Fantastic!”


End file.
